The film begins with a background of DeNoble as a naive working class lad finding himself as a post doc fellow with a job offer from Phillip Morris. His work for PM involved research on alternatives to nicotine that might reduce cardiovascular risks. Studies on lab rats led to the conclusion that nicotine was in fact a very addictive substance. Phillip Morris shut down the research and fired DeNoble. Bound by a nondisclosure clause, it was only a decade later that this research was revealed in testimony before a congressional panel investigating the tobacco industry. Using interviews with lawyers, industry executives, and public health advocates the film follows litigation, the first efforts at FDA regulation, the MSA, the Family Smoking and Tobacco Prevention Act, and the RICO conviction of the tobacco industry in U.S. v Phillip Morris et al. At a certain point in this journey DeNoble decides to dedicate his advocacy to educating children about addiction and tobacco.
Previous to the viewing a couple sitting behind me identified themselves as novices to tobacco prevention asking what they could expect. I told them I hoped that the film would help direct advocates to recognizing the necessity of challenging the tobacco industry. Without understanding the vector of the industry tobacco control at best is masturbation.
The film did a fine job of documenting the last 30 years of public health’s dealings with the tobacco industry. Where it failed was in noting that what passed for public health victories were actually successful long term industry strategies. The adult smoking rate may have fallen from around 60% in the late 50s to 20% today but morbidity from tobacco related disease still tops 400,000 Americans annually. The litigation of the late 90’s spawned the Master Settlement Agreement with the states. But of those settled funds only about 2% are spent on tobacco prevention today. The first efforts in the 90s at allowing the FDA regulatory control over tobacco were thwarted by the Supreme Court’s ruling that for the FDA to retain it’s guarantee for health and safety it would have no choice but to ban tobacco. Congress had not given the FDA that authority. The 2009 Family Smoking and Tobacco Prevention Act was a law written by Phillip Morris allowing FDA limited regulation and compromising that guarantee and the integrity of the FDA. And even the significant RICO conviction carried no meaningful punitive measures. To many of us the film was ancient history just scratching the surface of tobacco industry subterfuge and deceit. But judging from the crowd reaction it was news to quite a few.
The documentary left the impression that the tobacco pandemic could be resolved if we could just keep young people from ever starting. That, in itself, is part of industry strategies to blame the victims for tobacco related disease while omitting their own culpability. Nowhere was it mentioned the numerous youth tobacco prevention programs the industry funds that have been shown to be ineffective and can actually increase youth initiation by depicting smoking as a choice only an adult should make. The film neglects the complicity that industry funding makes of otherwise well intentioned groups like the Boys and Girls Clubs and 4H Clubs. We don’t see how Keep America Beautiful is hijacked into providing public ashtrays that not only distract the blame for litter from tobacco companies but actually encourage public smoking. We don’t learn in the film that the growth market for tobacco is in the lowest socio economic class in this country and in underdeveloped nations. Unmentioned are the millions the tobacco industry spends in a token effort to make themselves appear to be good corporate citizens while profiting from a product that is by far the leading cause of death and disease on the planet. We don’t hear of the political funding opposing tobacco taxes and tobacco free spaces. Or of the friendly politicians bought by the pallet load.
Addiction Incorporated is a film we all should see. But it should be viewed with the awareness that the tobacco industry is actually much much more amoral. The documentary is good as long as we realize it is but a starting place in challenging tobacco.
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